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The history of study of Dinaric glaciation


Gjuro Pilar, professor of geology at the University of Zagreb, wrote first account on glaciation of Dinaric mountains ever in 1877, 37 years after Agassiz' Neuchatel lecture. However, the idea of glaciated Dinaric mountains was not readily accepted, and was strongly criticized by Dragutin Gorjanović (1902, 1907) who wrote that he wanted "to settle the debate once and for all". Gjuro Pilar died in 1893, and did not witness fierce battle between Gorjanović and Hinko Hranilović over the evidence of glaciation of Dinaric mountains, Velebit and Medvednica in particular in the year of 1906. Not only Gorjanović opposed any idea of Dinaric glaciation, but also his successor Josip Poljak (1947) who made strong effort to silence all proponents of the glaciation in these parts. So, it was not before 1973, and Nikler's paper on moraine ridge on the southern Velebit Mt., that Dinaric glaciation become accepted at least locally, almost 100 years after Pilar's paper. Although it may seem that after this discovery, the study of glacial traces in Dinarides would be accelerated, it acutally did not make significant progress untill 1980-es and 1990-es, at least in respect to the number of published papers. Indeed, a lot of field research was performed, and the first Master's Thesis on glacial history of the Velebit Mt. was defended at the University of Beograd by Srđan Belij in 1984. The progress in research was nevertheless very slow, partly because the lack of specific knowledge and experience in paleoglaciological study, partly because of general scepticism about glaciation in central Europe, so the next defended Doctoral Thesis was by Ljerka Marjanac in 2012, almost 30 years later. Herein we present historical overview of all published papers, thesis, abstracts and field guides related to glaciation of the Croatian Dinarides. The list is not fully complete, becuse some old publications are hard to obtain, but the list provides source of information on the available publications.

Pleistocene glaciation; researchers; authors; history of research

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